Matt Edit How To...

I thought it was time I did something constructive and posted a quick 'how-to'.  You see a lot of images with a matt edit on them - some people love them, some hate them.  I think it looks great on the right image.  Like most edits it's very quick and easy to achieve in LightRoom - so here goes.

So here's my original image of Pepper being a diva under a blanket,

and this is how the histogram looks.

NB You don't have to take any notice

of your histogram if you don't want to, I'm only

showing it to illustrate what I'm doing and why.

What we want to do is lessen the contrast and squash the tones together toward the centre of the histogram.

So here's the first edit. 

 On the Tone Curve in RGB mode I've brought the shadow point up (left side) 

and the highlight down (right side).  

Note what it's done to the histogram.

I used the contrast slider to add slightly more contrast than I had...

 The Tone Curve is great for working with different

colour channels too.  I wanted a more 'vintage' feel to the image so

I used the Red channel and took

the shadows very slightly up and the highlights down.

I then used the same technique with the Blue.

To show you can play around with the Tone Curve

to get the effect that best suits your image and the effect you want,

here I've taken the original photo and moved only the

shadows pointer, but also brought the curve down slightly.

The whole thing is now 'punchier' with brighter light tones. 

Here's the same image with the saturation

slider taken right down to the light.

I think the matt effect particularly 

suits black and white.

So play around with it and have fun.